A New Toy

I write this on my new and shiny Kindle Fire toy.  A pointless post other than to prove how easy it is!

My thoughts now turn to knitting it a case.  I’ve had tablet yarn for about 2 years now.

Marmalade Buns

Shockingly I realised this week that haven’t baked any cake based products in my flat this year.  So clearly this needed putting right.  Having sourced for myself a jar of homemade marmalade from the rents  a few months ago, and having had this recipe recommended to me a while ago by olderthanieverintendedtobe it seemed the perfect choice.

The recipe comes from Jane Brocket’s Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer because they are Paddington Bear’s favourite marmalade buns.  It is a recipe book that I love the concept of, but as yet haven’t fallen in love with the book.  The lack of an index at the front is the most frustrating thing, as there is no quick way to get an overview of the recipes to remind you of possibilities once you’ve read through it already.  However, the buns are delicious so perhaps I love it a little be more now.  The recipe is available online in an American version of measurements here.

I decided to use 2 eggs instead of three which made 8 decent sized muffins.  The biggest change I made was to the icing, deciding against using icing sugar and instead mixing the orange juice with sugar and marmalade to make a sticky syrup, which I poured over the buns whilst they were still warm.  Making only 8 buns meant I only needed 1 orange, half the juice going in the cake (the little added wetness made no apparent difference) and the other half on the top.  Given a whole orange went into the thing, they are practically a health food…

Look Up

It is easy to become complacent, by nature it happens without us even realising, so sometimes a small jolt is welcome. Mine came in the form of a heron.

I have grown used to living in this little bit of country* I’ve now seen the pattern of four whole seasons change, develop, grow and fade before my watchful eye.  Before I lived here I knew once a year the fields turned yellow.  Now I know they turn yellow in May.  It might be an obvious thing, information easily garnered from the internet, yet nothing stores it in the memory quite like observation.

So the heron.  There I was walking along a familiar and well trodden path when a whoosh of wings, legs and other sharp angles of the most ungainly of birds suddenly appeared and took off about ten metres from me.  They are surprisingly big in flight.

I would have thought little more of it had it not been for a day later, when venturing on my annual pilgrimage to my local bluebell wood, a red kite (those glorious swoopy birds) landed not ten metres (yes that’s the other theme) from me.  I’m used to seeing them a lot flying around, I even from the sofa of my flat, but that close up is always a treat.  On a quiet country road one can occasionally afford the luxury of just stopping, so I did and admired.  The kite decided I wasn’t all that tasty and quickly flew off, but later it and a friend gave me a good demonstration of how to drift in the breeze.  I tried to take pictures, my phone does not do pictures of birds!

However, it was only whilst in the Bluebell wood where I finally realised the power of looking up, or at least the power of looking around and away from the show.  Bluebells by their very nature are always going to draw the eye, yet at the moment I did look up I was greeted with this beautiful sight.

Then to round off the weekend was the Air Show.  One of those occasions where every time you hear the engine noise the loudest it means you have just missed the spectacle.  So no photos again (this blog post was brought to by a lot of trust) but everyone knows what a biplane and a wartime bomber looks like so that’s ok

Today, however, brought me back down to ground level.  For if you look up too much you might just tread on a friendly frog…

I’ve had a lovely Bank Holiday weekend.  I hope everyone else has too.

*Well a town that happens to be on a river.

Do Something New A Month ~ April

I’m beginning to get the ‘this year is running away with me’ feeling.  It is almost May and I do wonder ‘have I really done the new things I wanted to?’  Yet this month the list is quite long!

What now seems a very long time ago the bestest and I took the Hogwarts Express (the Spinster Mobile masquerading under cover of the early Saturday morning) and went to visit Hogwarts.  There was so much stuff to see, but I loved the models best.

Then this weekend past I went and did my daughterly duty and helped out selling books at the Quilt Exhibition of the quilting group my Mother belongs to.  Over 700 people came through the door and out little stall raised £200 for charity alone.  Then I got to bring my quilt back home.  A good trade off methinks.  The weekend also involved this exciting ladder onto a roof.  I like a good ladder.

I made Thai fish ‘cakes’ for the first time.  They became more a fish topping, but I liked it and so made them again.  I was also given my first ever free loaf of bread, which was massive but oh so tasty.

This month I was brave and ventured out to an evening workshop where we made knitted bracelets.  Everyone was lovely and I was the class swot as I finished mine on the night. I’m not entirely sure the outcome is me, but with some tinkering I’ll get there.  I also made my first Dorset Buttons, from a kit I bought from Beaker Button. The instructions looked extremely daunting but they actually worked out quite well and quickly. The final excitement was an adventure to a new yarn shop in Oxford.

The shortest list is the last.  I only read one new author, but it was John le Carré so I proceeded to read lots more!

Happy Birthday Wisden

I have an interesting relationship with the colour yellow, like most people it doesn’t suit me to wear but the Brass Band I played for in my salad days uniquely had a yellow uniform and I was rather fond of it…

This bring me to my most favourite yellow thing. The wonderful dustwrapper of the Wisden Almanac. Many bookshelves have been brightened by it.

Well I like a good collection and consequently I have bought every edition since I fell in love with cricket 20 years ago. I think I need a dedicated bookcase.

My favourite bit about Wisden? Well it is tricky to choose just one thing in a tome over 1500 pages. The Cricketers of the Year always seem to be just right, but provoke further thought. This year reflects this with the choice of Jacques Kallis.  How only now for the first time?  Yet Wisden also will hold the answer to that question.  However, I do love the miscellaneous section.

Also, which other book would tell me I fell in love with cricket sometime in the afternoon of 3rd June 1993?

And the green book peeking through at the bottom?  Yes, I bought the 1st Edition of Wisden Australia.

Springtime?

Flicking through the photos on my phone over the weekend I came upon the few I had taken of bluebells in My Favourite Local Bluebell Wood last year.   In fact the very date of this photo was 22nd April 2012!  They weren’t quite there, but certainly there was a hint of blue.

 

We are all aware of spring’s reluctant appearance this year; only now we finally have a hint of blossom and the daffodils are still holding sway.  It has felt like spring has been getting earlier every year so perhaps this year it is actually one time?  Anyway the chance to make a direct comparison was too much to resist.  So here is 22nd April 2013.

 

I have to say the display of wood anemones was pretty impressive.  There were a few winter aconites left in places, but I really had to search for a hint of bluebell.  Maybe Mother will be lucky and get her bluebells on Skomer this year?

 

 

That’ll Be The Day When I Dye

There was a week last summer, just before the Olympics when there was sunshine.  Yes, I know it sounds unlikely, especially since the brief promise of sunshine has turned grey and rainy today, but honestly it was true.  It has to be true as sun dying without sunshine would be a little tricky!

I have done various types of dying before as special assistant to my Mother, given that she has the tools, equipment, space and most importantly of all the fabric needed to accomplish the task.  We always try to dye outside as it is much easier to clean up afterwards .  Cold water procion dyes give fabric a great vibrant colour and if you have the time you can produce lovely shades of a particular colour.  However, I find sun dying is more me (aka fun) as it allows me to be more creative and there is a hint of magic about it.

The reason I’m blogging about something that I did so long ago is that today the recipient of the fabric finally had her Christmas present and so it is no longer a well kept super sekrit.  I used a mixture of silk and fabric paints and went for a purple theme, her favourite colour.

Fabric one had a garden theme.  In that I hunted the garden for suitable leaves, grasses and flower heads which were placed on the fabric as it dried.  I also painted onto some leaves (with glittery paint) and did a little stamping.  It’s great fun peeling back the leaves to see the resultant pattern underneath.

Fabric two was painted and then covered with salt.  This is the magic, or chemistry.  The salt reacts with the dye producing an effect almost like blurred water as the colour retreats from the salt.

Fabric three has more of a miscellaneous feel with buttons and thread used alongside fine gravel, paint sprayed and flicked from a toothbrush and other bits and bobs.  In other words I was in my stride and enjoying playing!

I love how they all produce slightly different textures and patterns, yet all work well together.  You can pretty much use anything that will leave its shape on the fabric, though if it happens to be windy, the heavier the better!

One note of caution about mixing dying and sunshine.  Never leave the fabric out in the sun for too long or it will bleach out all the colour.  We once had a batch of blue dye that went patchy and all faded.  That was sad.